Driven by the will to live

The activities of Liubomyra Boichyshyn, who heads the Liubomyra Women Information and Rehabilitation Center, have spread to 16 Ukrainian cities. In 2005 she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She has lived a life full of drama and struggle, the life of a politician’s wife. Her deceased husband, Mykhailo Boichyshyn, was Secretary of the People’s Movement of Ukraine (NRU) and paid with his life for his love of freedom and his populist ideas. He has been missing for 15 years now. Six months after the disappearance of his father, Liubomyra’s son died under suspicious circumstances. The woman’s body broke down, and she ended up in a wheelchair. But her spirit has still held on. Today Liubomyra Boichyshyn is a good role model for those who have to fight for life, even when there is no more strength to go on.

“WE WERE LIVING IN HORRIBLE TIMES WHEN OUR SOULS WERE ENSLAVED...”

At Boichyshyn’s apartment, a guest is first met by the watchful gaze of Taras Shevchenko’s whose portrait, right opposite the entrance, seems to inquire what the guest’s intentions are, good or evil. Later, you cannot get rid of the feeling that there is something in common between the great Ukrainian poet and the mistress of the house. It is perhaps the same look in their eyes, strong-willed and sad at once.

The doorsteps in the rooms are adjusted for the wheelchair which Liubomyra uses to get around the place. The walls are hung with oil paintings. They are so much like small windows overlooking the quiet backstreets of medieval Lviv.

On top of the cupboard sits a skillfully made didukh, a sheaf of wheat ears used in traditional Ukrainian Christmas rites. It was made for Liubomyra by a disabled lady from Lviv. Next to the didukh is a huge portrait of a strong, determined man with a high brow.

“This is my husband — but what’s the use of talking,” Liubomyra gave a wistful sigh.

When two people walk the same streets, have common friends but meet each other a thousand miles away from home, this means nothing but fate.

“There was some history behind how we got to know each other,” said Liubomyra laughing gently. “Who could have thought that two Lvivites might meet in Alushta?

“I was spending that summer in a student camp. On the last day there was a farewell disco. I wanted to have a whale of time but a young guy wearing glasses would not let go of me, so I couldn’t dance with anyone. We spent that night talking our heads off: me and him, and the shooting stars, and the gentle sea... We had more than enough things to discuss.”

On an October night when the girl was busy reading, her mother asked her who the young man circling their house was. Liubomyra did not pay attention, but her Mom went out and asked him if he was looking for someone. “Yes, I am,” he said confidently. “I’m looking for Liubomyra.”

“It has to be him or no one else. That’s what my heart told me then, and it was right,” continues Liubomyra. “We were living in horrible times — both our country and our souls were enslaved. For a decade we were on record as ‘criminals’ — only for having a church wedding. It was 1972, just after the mass arrests of Ukrainian intellectuals. We are Greek Catholics, and our Church was being persecuted at the time. But I couldn’t do otherwise. This is how we were brought up: a marriage without the church ceremony was something utterly unthinkable. We arranged for the wedding with a priest of Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral in Lviv, where my grandmother was wed and my mother was baptized. My parents also had their wedding at that church. So did we.”

Since then the Boichyshyns were labeled as ‘suspicious’. Mykhailo once got a chance to be promoted to the head of the department where he was working. But the KGB men promptly made a “relevant” comment: “How is Boichyshyn going to head a department if he had a church wedding?” His designs for conveyor engineering are still being used in Europe, though he never got any incentives from the Soviet regime.

“Frankly, those were horrible times of constant pressure, dictatorship, when an individual didn’t have any civil rights, and one could be exiled to Siberia for as much as wearing a traditional Ukrainian embroidered shirt.

“We brought up our children, Lidia and Roman, as Christians. But when the kids said at school that they had been to church to have Easter breads blessed, we had to listen to lengthy chastisements from their teachers for badly neglecting our children? It just hurts to think of all the young years we wasted.”

HER HUSBAND MADE HISTORY

Mykhailo Boichyshyn was to become one of those who created the contemporary history of Ukraine. Together with Viacheslav Chornovil he was involved in launching the NRU. In 1992, nominated by Chornovil, Boichyshyn was elected Deputy Head of the NRU. He headed the Secretariat of NRU and was Chornovil’s closest and most reliable friend. Just before the presidential election of 1994, the NRU was gaining momentum and becoming increasingly popular. But as it often happens, great popularity is inevitably accompanied by great envy — and death.

On January 15, in Lviv, Liubomyra heard on the radio that the Head of the NRU Secretariat was missing. Her husband never came home. Today there remains no doubts that he fell victim to the first political reprisal in the new, independent Ukraine. Chornovil and Gongadze were to follow.

After six months Liubomyra lost her younger son, Roman, a victim of a car crash. Even now Liubomyra does not believe that her son’s death was a mere accident, but she hasn’t been able to prove anything, either then or now. Neither was Atena Pashko or Myroslava Gongadze, widows of Vyacheslav Chornovil and Georgii Gongadze respectively. Liubomyra’s body broke down. She went down with multiple sclerosis, lost use of her legs and was unable to walk.

INSPIRATION COMES FROM CHINA

To put up with disability and confine herself to living without movement — that is definitely out of Liubomyra’s character. There has always been this resolute ring to her voice. She is an inveterate optimist. In 1995 she quit everything and left for China. At the time a world conference of women’s NGOs was taking place in Beijing. This was the start of a new life for Liubomyra, a life full of commitment and work. She was the first woman to organize a movement of the disabled in Ukraine.

“I was terribly afraid to go there. I thought that I was going to be the only person in a wheelchair. But what I saw there struck me immensely: 200 women in their wheelchairs had come from all over the world to claim their rights.

“I came home elated and sat down to apply for a grant from an international organization. That’s how I created the Liubomyra Women Information and Rehabilitation Center.”

Any able-bodied woman might envy Liubomyra’s energy. She brought together disabled women from all over Ukraine to tell them for the first time that they have the right to get out of their apartments and fill their lives with a new meaning. The Center had 16 branches in various oblasts of the country. Several hundred disabled people came to attend Liubomyra’s seminars. She learned to solve all problems on her own.

“A girl came once who hadn’t left home for seven years after an accident. Soon after the seminar, she went to college and got married,” says Liubomyra proudly. “Many of our students now have formal education, good jobs, and, moreover, they have families and children. They have learned the main lesson: a woman in a wheelchair is not a deprived and miserable creature. She is a queen and she can handle anything. You have to accept yourself the way you are, and then life itself will go your way.”

Starting in 1997, she published the magazine Liubomyra for the disabled for six years. At first she was backed by Western, in particular Canadian, foundations. But now they consider her “too experienced” in this field to need any more support from the outside. Luckily enough, there have sprung up numerous state-administered and programs for the disabled financed from local budgets and the need for private initiative by single activists is gradually decreasing.

Clearly, this determined woman can be a good role model for anyone, as she daily finds in herself will to live, joy over every day, and faith in the victory of the human spirit.